Talk Talk Boss Takes Home £2.8M

Despite a cyber attack that potentially cost the company Talk Talk millions in profit and custom, talk Talk boss Dido Harding still took home a healthy £2.8M in her pay packet. The cyber attack that affected thousands of Talk Talk customers, meaning their details were hacked and personal information shared, was unfortunate, but Talk Talk were soon praised for how they dealt with the situation, bouncing back better than ever. As a result, Dido Harding received her £550, 000 base salary and the rest came as benefits and shares which were linked to a longer term incentive plan. According to an annual report, the salary is up nearly £2m from the previous year. Due to losing loyal customers after the cyber attack, Talk Talk suffered a loss of a whopping £60 million. Dido Harding has said that out of the money she received following the attack, her £220, 000 cash bonus would go to an autism charity.

Customer Care

Most telecommunication companies pride themselves on offering cheap deals and freebies for new customers, in order to lure them into signing years worth of contracts with them. Talk Talk realised that after the attack which massively tarnished their reputation, they would not have much hope in tempting new customers. Instead, they would have to focus on the existing ones, optimising their experience with Talk Talk. They needed to reassure their customers of the security they had in place as well as sort of thanking them for remaining with them. Talk talk’s annual profits had halved, coming in at £14 million in May, in comparison to £32 million the previous year. Despite their losses, Talk Talk has proven to be somewhat unbreakable, managing things professionally. Being criticised widely over social media, it is no surprise that they lost a significant amount of custom.

Hacking Operation

The highly illegal hacking of Talk talk that took place last year was scarily like a robbing heist, with hackers threatening to sell stolen details in illegal auctions. With so many people affected, it was important that Talk Talk did something drastic, to make sure their customers were safe. Talk talk were originally criticised for not being clear about how many customer’s were affected by the breach, but it eventually emerged that the hackers had incriminated 157, 000 customers and 1.2 million pieces of data including mobile numbers and home addresses. Although Talk Talk has been praised from dealing with the attack well, and bouncing back quickly in their operations, their security suffered a massive failure and as a result over 150, 000 customers were put at risk with violation of their personal and private details. Talk Talk now need to ensure the significant measures are in place to stop this from ever happening again.